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FROM UNIVERSITY TO AUTHOR: PUBLISHING MY OWN BOOK

We interview Arti Rajput, recently published author of His Side, Her Side, Facebook & The Truth. She talks to us about the publishing process, how her journey in writing began and the stigma attached to self-published authors. Arti also reveals a hint or two about other short-stories and novels she has in the pipeline.

When did it all begin- how did you come to write a novel?I was studying English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Portsmouth and for our dissertation we had the choice to write a short piece of prose. After I graduated I moved to Italy to teach English and wrote a novel while I was there. When it came to publishing my short story, (I’ve always wanted to be an author), I wanted to start with the piece for my dissertation as I’d enjoyed writing it so much. People write things every day but rarely show the work to anyone.

Why did you decide to self-publish?I think that self-publishing allows you to learn so much more about the process for publishing a book. Of course, I’d love to go through a well-known publisher for my other novels but the process taught me so much. I’ve learnt everything about the hard work that goes into nearly every aspect of putting a book through the e-book and print process. There’s the cover design and layering, width margins, page numbering, extra content writing, a lot of marketing, creating an author website (www.artirajput.com) and simply spreading the word. I’m sure there are a lot of things I’ve forgotten!

What about the stigma attached to self-publishing? Wouldn’t you rather wait and look for an agent and a publisher?That option will always be available to me. For me, it’s all about seeing what’s out there and trying different things to see what works best for me. Marketing a book yourself isn’t the easiest process but you learn so much from it. It can be easier in terms of you calling all the shots but I believe actually publishing a book yourself can be a longer process at times, mainly because you have to think of everything and do so much research on the smallest things. I keep saying to all of my friends that I know so much about things I don’t want to know. Yet, learning everything was fun in some ways.

For somebody who has published a book, would you recommend self-publishing or would you suggest they wait?I would recommend self-publishing, but going through a publisher is also great. It gives you the traditional book publishing feel that I hope to experience one day. Self-publishing is definitely the way forward in terms of getting your writing out in the world and introducing yourself as an author. I plan to publish an e-book via Kindle Publishing which is free to purchase, just to add to the joviality of the e-book writing community.

How did you go about the editing process?As my short-story started as a dissertation project, I had plenty of self-appointed editors. From University lecturers and Creative Writing peers to eager family and friends. I have a network of people who have their own personal skill-set; where one friend is great with grammar and sentence syntax, others notice more about the flow of my words and the simplest things, such as spelling mistakes that can be easily missed.

I’ve also worked on editorial content, so attempted to read my own work as if I was editing somebody else’s. A draft always needs to be read by someone other than you and I’ve learnt that it’s good to always have a strong team of editors around you.

How far do you want to get with this book?I started to write because I wanted to bring to others the same feeling I received from escapism. It would be great to have effected at least one person’s life with the subtle issues I wrote about in His Side, Her Side, Facebook & The Truth. I think when it comes down to it, if my book made at least one person happy or feel something from my words, then I’ve achieved my goal.

To learn more about Arti head to www.artirajput.com, where you will find direct links to the Amazon pages for her book and links to all of her past published work.